Preventing global warming is the cheap option
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I got as far as global warm deteriorating our infrastructure and didn't want to spit up my coffee.
Climate change: 3 reasons businesses aren't seeking solutions
Short term thinking
One is the perennial business difficulty of what might be called a short investment horizon, or short-term thinking.
It's a well-established principle of business (and economics) that money in your hand today is worth more than money you’re expecting to earn tomorrow. That is the reason interest rates exist. It is why people run up credit card bills.
But that natural urge to have it all now has been exacerbated by a business culture that likes to take the money and run.
Vested interests
Which brings us to reason number two. For companies that already have a successful business model worked out, battling climate change is a form of economic disruption in itself.
Many existing business strategies are founded on rent-seeking or vested interests, based on the stream of profits from the brilliant innovations, infrastructure and practices they established decades ago. Businesses have invested in factories, pipelines, and the entire fabric and structure of their companies to perform a limited set of tasks that only work in the world as it is now.
'In Canada, the current government's power base in the Western oil fields makes it difficult to encourage disruptive change.'- Don Pittis
No wonder they are willing to spend to protect those investments from change — and for many, taking steps to minimize climate change would be a bigger immediate disruption than the effects of climate change itself.
Climate change futures
As for reason number three, there is something self-fulfilling about it, but it may be that business leaders have begun to honestly believe the widespread propaganda of climate change denial. Perhaps they are truly convinced that the vast majority of scientists, save those paid by the Scientific American donors mentioned above, are all wrong.
That is why I think some clever experts in derivatives who are sympathetic to climate change should set up instruments that allow investors to put their money where their mouths are.
There would be many ways to do it, but one would be to buy options on coastal U.S. (or global) land that the climate change scientists say will be flooded. Investors convinced that climate change and its effects are false or excessively pessimistic could bid up the options on that land confident that it would keep its value. Climate change believers would take the opposite play.
Climate change: 3 reasons businesses aren't seeking solutions
Short term thinking
One is the perennial business difficulty of what might be called a short investment horizon, or short-term thinking.
It's a well-established principle of business (and economics) that money in your hand today is worth more than money you’re expecting to earn tomorrow. That is the reason interest rates exist. It is why people run up credit card bills.
But that natural urge to have it all now has been exacerbated by a business culture that likes to take the money and run.
Vested interests
Which brings us to reason number two. For companies that already have a successful business model worked out, battling climate change is a form of economic disruption in itself.
Many existing business strategies are founded on rent-seeking or vested interests, based on the stream of profits from the brilliant innovations, infrastructure and practices they established decades ago. Businesses have invested in factories, pipelines, and the entire fabric and structure of their companies to perform a limited set of tasks that only work in the world as it is now.
'In Canada, the current government's power base in the Western oil fields makes it difficult to encourage disruptive change.'- Don Pittis
No wonder they are willing to spend to protect those investments from change — and for many, taking steps to minimize climate change would be a bigger immediate disruption than the effects of climate change itself.
Climate change futures
As for reason number three, there is something self-fulfilling about it, but it may be that business leaders have begun to honestly believe the widespread propaganda of climate change denial. Perhaps they are truly convinced that the vast majority of scientists, save those paid by the Scientific American donors mentioned above, are all wrong.
That is why I think some clever experts in derivatives who are sympathetic to climate change should set up instruments that allow investors to put their money where their mouths are.
There would be many ways to do it, but one would be to buy options on coastal U.S. (or global) land that the climate change scientists say will be flooded. Investors convinced that climate change and its effects are false or excessively pessimistic could bid up the options on that land confident that it would keep its value. Climate change believers would take the opposite play.
Climate change: 3 reasons businesses aren't seeking solutions
All of the atmospheric models are useless without first understanding oceanic systems.
How is that coming along?
Oceanic models should be abundant. Google.ca
Ocean numerical models have become quite realistic over the past several years as a result of improved methods, faster computers, and global data sets. Models now treat basin-scale to global domains while retaining the fine spatial scales that are important for modeling the transport of heat, salt, and other properties over vast distances. Simulations are reproducing observed satellite results on the energetics of strong currents and are properly showing diverse aspects of thermodynamic and dynamic ocean responses ranging from deep-water production to El Niño. Now models can represent not only currents but also the consequences for climate, biology, and geochemistry over time spans of months to decades. However, much remains to be understood from models about ocean circulation on longer time scales, including the evolution of the dominant water masses, the predictability of climate, and the ocean's influence on global change
Ocean numerical models have become quite realistic over the past several years as a result of improved methods, faster computers, and global data sets. Models now treat basin-scale to global domains while retaining the fine spatial scales that are important for modeling the transport of heat, salt, and other properties over vast distances. Simulations are reproducing observed satellite results on the energetics of strong currents and are properly showing diverse aspects of thermodynamic and dynamic ocean responses ranging from deep-water production to El Niño. Now models can represent not only currents but also the consequences for climate, biology, and geochemistry over time spans of months to decades. However, much remains to be understood from models about ocean circulation on longer time scales, including the evolution of the dominant water masses, the predictability of climate, and the ocean's influence on global change